Closer still, you can see that there are wide gaps along the bottom of the cone—like a tent just a little too short for its ropes. The train slides in right under the edge. And then everything gets real bright.
Terminus is more than a launching station, it's a domed city—bigger than enormous, twenty klicks across. Think of a gigantic tent that uses the three cables of the beanstalk as the central mast, the tent fabric is made out of the same monofilament stuff as the Line, and all of the supporting cables are actual beanstalk filaments anchored off axis for additional stability. So once you're inside the tent, you're actually inside the beanstalk. It's a whole other world. Distances don't look the same. You can't tell how near or how far anything is. And everywhere, the filaments of the beanstalk spread out like rays of the sun, stabbing into the ground and anchoring themselves deep in the bedrock.
The top of the Terminus dome goes up so high it fades away in the distance. It's almost like someone took the meteor crater and turned it upside down over everything like a gigantic cup, only bigger than that. Terminus dome is so big it has its own weather. They get clouds and fog, and sometimes they even get little rainstorms. But the outer surface of the tent is painted with solar crystals to generate power for the air-conditioning inside, so it's mostly comfortable.
And of course, the three main cables of the Line are visible from everywhere. They're all lit up like a big bar of sunlight, so everything inside is as bright as it is outside—and that's pretty bright, because it's right spang on the equator. There's a line drawn across Terminus so you can tell where the equator is; you can stand in both hemispheres at the same time if you want to.
The actual cables of the Line were a lot thicker than I thought they would be. And they were spaced quite a distance apart; it looked like at least a kilometer, maybe more. There was a lot of traffic on them too. There was always at least one car inside the dome going slowly up or down on each of the strands. They don't really get up to full speed until they get out of the dome and out of the thickest part of the atmosphere.
I guess we did a lot of gaping. Everyone did. That's because Terminus dome is like no other place in the world—at least not any place I'd ever been. It's like an amusement park and a shopping mall and a factory all scrunched together. Everything was stacked on top of everything else. Towers and balconies and gardens and waterfalls everywhere. And rides and restaurants and all kinds of theaters and stores and clubs. And signs and lights and music and a constant roar of noise. We could even hear it inside the train.
The train station is elevated, so as the train pulls into the tent you can see the whole interior of the station spread out below like a big jumbled toy box, and everybody all over the dome can see the SuperTrain too. It's really impressive. But when you get off, Weird pointed out, you're still in a holding area. You have to go through multiple security gates where you get scanned and photographed and inspected, and then only when they're satisfied that you're not some kind of terrorist or madman do they let you go down the ramp into the city. Stinky was already pulling at Dad's arm. "I wanna go on the rides—" But Dad shook his head and said, "We're about to go on the biggest ride of all, kiddo."
We were each responsible for our own luggage. Dad had insisted that we travel light. When we turned in the rent-a-car in Mexico, we left behind everything we weren't going to need for the trip up to Geostationary and back, and that meant most of Stinky's toys—not the monkey, though; Dad insisted Stinky bring it after he'd spent all that cash—and the rest of the stuff like bathing suits and towels and dirty clothes and extra jeans. We just put it all in a big box and shipped it home.
Weird and Stinky and I had all our stuff in backpacks. Dad had his stuff in a rollaround. Stinky had half his clothes in his own backpack and the other half in a smaller one on the monkey; he held its hand and chattered at it like they were married. It waddled beside him like an obedient child with a full diaper. It was almost cute. I said they looked like twins, which got a laugh from Weird and a dirty look from Dad. "Well, it looks just like him—" I started to say, but Stinky heard that and started crying, and suddenly he didn't like his monkey at all anymore. "Does not look like me!" he said, kicking it away. Of course, the monkey came scurrying right back to him, so he kicked at it again—the monkey jumped out of the way and Stinky fell on his butt. And started wailing like an injured banshee. People were staring at us now, some of them angrily, as they threaded their way around us. We were blocking the access to the exit gate.
Dad got really angry. He scooped up the monkey and thrust it into my arms. "You started this, Charles. You take care of the monkey!" Of course, the monkey didn't want to be carried. Not by me, anyway. Stinky had thoroughly imprinted it, so all it wanted to do was get back to him. It squirmed and whimpered and trembled and kept trying to wriggle out of my arms. "Stop it!" I said firmly, but the monkey ignored me. I tried feeling around for its off switch, but the monkey started giggling as if I was tickling it. Then it started screeching.
The noise got Stinky's attention. He started screaming at me, "That's my monkey! I want it back! Give it back!" Dad tried to calm him down, but Stinky kept squirming and crying and screaming, just like the monkey, and finally he wriggled out of Dad's grasp and came and grabbed the damn thing out of my arms. I couldn't believe it; they really were twins. I stood there, staring at him, wondering why any kid's parents would ever let him survive long enough to reach adulthood. There must be something about parents—some kind of chemical trigger in the brain—that keeps them from strangling their own children.
I started to say something about that, but Dad just glared at me and said, "Why don't you keep your mouth shut for a while, Charles. You've said enough for one day."
Right. Stinky threw a tantrum and it was my fault. If I'd have been Dad, I'd have put that damn monkey into the nearest trash can. In pieces.
They pushed on through the gate, leaving me staring after them astonished, wishing I could be an orphan for a while. Anything would be better than this. Maybe I should just divorce them all and the hell with it. The more I thought about it, the more I liked that idea. I could look up the procedures on the net, I'd done it before, but I'd never followed through. Maybe this time I'd stay angry long enough. In the meantime ... I reshouldered my backpack and followed. Like I always do.
From the train terminal, there's a shuttle-train on a sort of circular track that winds back and forth and in and out of everything all around the Terminus dome. It's free, and you can get on it anywhere and just go around and around all day long. The shuttle goes through at least a dozen hotels and a couple of big shopping centers and a several huge museums and an amusement park and over an indoor lake and through a whole bunch of permanent apartments and offices. There are theaters and clubs and parks and restaurants everywhere and I don't know what else. If you can imagine it, it's probably here.
Climbing up the inside of the tent, there are at least fifty stories of balconies and terraces all of them piled up high like a man-made crater wall. Dad said someday it'll be a hundred and fifty stories of apartments and offices and stores on the inside. And probably more outside too.
Dad had a book about the cable, and he started pointing out stuff and explaining it to us as we went. Even though I was still angry, some of it was kind of interesting. He said there were even more city levels higher up the Line, some already developed, some awaiting future expansion. In fact, there were public parts of the structure all the way up to six kilometers, because some people like living that high; some of the industrial levels went even higher. There were a lot of weather stations too. The meteorologists loved the Line because it gave them a real-time core sample of the atmosphere. And there were all kinds of factories that needed high altitudes for various processes and stuff. Above that, there were observatories and broadcast stations up the entire length of the orbital elevator. So it wasn't all empty cable.